Arcata About to Turn Out the Lights on Its Only Viable Export Industry – It’s a Job Killer

Stupid? Yes!

Shortsighted? Yes!

Arcata, the nice little college town a few miles north of us here in Eureka, is about to enact an “excess energy tax” that is designed to put the many grow houses in the city out of business. Or it is a greedy grab of gray market proceeds by a local governement desperate for more tax revenue. Take your pick.

Starting from about a year or so ago, we have been getting spurts of anti-grow propaganda foisted on us, most of it pointing out how much electricity is “wasted” by these grow houses. No doubt growing indoor pot uses electricity, and a bunch of it.

But lets just say that there are 100 commercial size grow ops in Arcata. I am not including personal medical grows that must be at least 1,000 or so in Arcata. Each one of these 100 commercial grows employs either directly or in the local supply chain and in casual labor at least 10 people. So that accounts for 1,000 jobs in Arcata. These grow houses are all paying rent or property taxes, all of the workers are spending money in Arcata. Drive off these 100 grow houses and you will see rents drop 10% in Arcata. You will see closed restaurants and gas stations. You will see empty storefronts like you see all over Eureka.

You see that is part of the real story here. Arcata has been pretty relaxed about marijuana since prop 215, though it looks like that may be changing. The regressive morons that have been running Eureka for the last 20 years have resisted this change. That is why Arcata is prospering and Eureka looks like…..shit. If there were pot money circulating in Eureka the way it does in Arcata there would be a lot fewer empty storefronts and restaurants in Eureka. This is not rocket science. Not only that but the Arcata pot industry is an export industry. This is new money flowing into Arcata and Humboldt County.

Now the HSU professor whose study is often cited to support this oppression of marijuana may have been accurate in stating the usage of electricity, but what of course is missing from the debate is the economic benefit resulting from indoor marijuana growing, especially in Northern Humboldt. You see growing pot outdoors is pretty much a purely agricultural process, but growing pot indoors is a hybrid agricultural-industrial process. All industrial processes require some energy input to create value added products. First of all, when you eliminate these grows you will have to find good paying jobs for 1,000 of your residents. Or they can move, and you will see your Arcata economy crater.

In Arcata in particular, although indoor farming uses electricity, it also uses city water, of which there is an abundant supply especially since the demise of the Samoa Pulp Mill ( a huge energy consumer that employed 200 people.) Outdoor pot growing requires irrigation, which is mostly supplied by draining handy creeks and rivers. So indoor pot growing in Nor Hum definitely has ecological benefits as well as the minus of energy use.

So now imagine that you are going to build a factory somewhere in Arcata that will employ 1,000 people at good wages. How much capital will that require? $100,000,000 or so I would think. How muc h land for a factory of that size? How much truck traffic and air pollution would a factory of that size produce? And even more relevant to the issue, how much electricity would that factory consume?

You folks in Arcata need to think about this. Because although the factory above is imaginary now, you will have to build it or see your economy crater if you drive out your only export business. I get it that family people don’t want commercial grows in their neighborhoods. Maybe a better solution would be to keep the grows, but encourage them to move to the industrial section of town. Work with them, not against them. Just a thought.

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